1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to the field of telecommunications. More particularly, the present invention relates to the distribution of voice announcements from a centralized recorded announcement platform to a plurality of end office switches.
2. Acronyms
The written description contains acronyms that refer to various telecommunications services, components and techniques, as well as features relating to the present invention. Although some of these acronyms are known, use of these acronyms is not strictly standardized in the art. For purposes of the written description, acronyms will be defined as follows:                Adaptive Differential Pulse Code Modulation (ADPCM)        Advanced Intelligent Network (AIN)        Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM)        Asynchronous Transfer Mode Gateway (ATMG)        Basic Rate Interface (BRI)        Carrier AIN (CAIN)        Dual Tone Multi-Frequency (DTMF)        Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN)        Intelligent Peripheral Announcement Device (IPAD)        Internet Protocol (IP)        Local Area Network (LAN)        Media Gateway (MG)        Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP)        Network Facility Access (NFA)        Open Systems Interconnection (OSI)        Primary Rate Interface (PRI)        Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN)        Pulse Code Modulation (PCM)        Service Control Point (SCP)        Service Switching Point (SSP)        Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)        Signaling System 7 (SS7)        Speech Activated Intelligent Dialing (SAID)        Time Division Multiplexing (TDM)        Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)        Voice Over IP (VoIP)        Wide Area Network (WAN)        
3. Background and Material Information
Telephone service providers provide voice announcements to subscribers in support of its services and to assist in call processing. The voice announcements are recorded voice files that are installed at each end office switch. That is, each particular recorded voice announcement must be duplicated or installed on each end office switch. To do so requires a substantial amount of time and resources from a manpower and hardware perspective.
With new services being offered frequently, flexibility in provisioning announcements is crucial. This is especially true with respect to the delivery and marketing of subscription and pay per use services. Moreover, an increasing segment of the population would appreciate announcements in a language other than English. Unfortunately, installing new announcements or changing existing announcements is very difficult to coordinate on a company wide basis, given the number of end office switches involved. Attempts at improving this process have proved unsatisfactory.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to implement a centralized digital recorded announcement system employing high speed transmission technology that would permit the provisioning of voice announcements quickly and inexpensively.